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Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
Well, if you look at history you can tell that something goes wrong with people. I guess the debate is at what point. I would conceive of "evil" more as an absence of something rather than a presence. People are born with greater and lesser capacities for all kinds of things -- great art, intellectual achievement, and also things like empathy, interest, compassion. So, yes, I think it is possible that some people are born not very interested in things and don't really take on board the reality of other people or their feelings.
It seemed to me that you were more interested in this specific situation -- of Eva and Kevin and his very special brand of ugliness -- than you were in trying to offer pat societal explanations for why teenagers shoot up their high schools. You alluded to the fact that they were rich and Kevin had everything he wanted, but you seemed to be mocking that theory at the same time.
I do think that one of the reasons we pay so much attention to those school shootings is because they're all middle class. That also entails ignoring the school shootings that are lower class, which are mostly gang or drug related. They are all the same, but we focus on the middle-class ones. And only in that way would I call it a class issue.
And while you weren't trying to make too many broad social judgments, you're definitely interested in America as a place, and the rest of the world as another. There's this constant antagonism between Eva, the world traveler, and her American-as-apple-pie husband, Franklin. You live in London part of the year. Why did you decide to make Franklin this patriotic, gee-whiz sort of guy and Eva much more skeptical?
I thought in some ways opposites attract. I thought that someone like me -- who was skeptical of the country and standoffish and critical and always made a point of spending as much time outside of America as possible -- could plausibly be attracted to someone with a different relationship to America, one that is warmer and sweeter and more of an embrace. When you've been fighting something all your life, the idea of giving in is attractive. Loving anything is attractive. I didn't mean for Franklin's patriotism to be mocked -- his relationship with the country is much more appealing than Eva's.
Their relationship, which is really amazing before they have kids, sets up Eva's decision to have a child in an interesting way. This was one of my favorite parts of the book: Here is this independent, self-possessed woman and she really loved it when Franklin said "Eva," in a possessive way, as if she was his. She imagined their child saying "Mommy" with that same sense of ownership. But it was really for her husband -- she had a child for him?
Yes, it was the one thing that she could give him that he wanted, besides a new jump-rope.
Do you think that's fairly common?
I think that often there's a slight disproportion for whom a child is conceived. I would say it's probably more common that the child is conceived for the mother rather than the father. But it does swing the other way. After all, you do meet men who are driven to paternity, really consumed by the idea of becoming fathers. If you fell in love with such a person, and you'd kind of been on the fence about the whole thing, wouldn't it pull you off of it?
And they did really have quite a devoted relationship before the children.
That's one of the things that theoretically most made me nervous about having a child. Why rock a steady boat? There are apparently two points in a marriage when it's most common to split up: The first year of the marriage and the first year after having a child. We like to think that it cements people.
Eva says, "We were so happy, what possessed us?"
I've come full circle to admiring people who are willing to take that gamble, the whole gamble -- the gamble with the relationship, the gamble with money, with who the child turns out to be, with whether or not the child has not just personality problems but perhaps serious medical problems. You're just taking on board potentially so much. I think it's amazing that so many people are willing to accept the risk.
And many do because of what people assure you. Part of the reason Franklin wanted to have a child was because he was watching his friend Brian acting like he was so happy and loved his children so much. Brian's attitude was, "You'll understand, but you won't understand until you have them."
Which is what everybody says.
It is what everybody says. Do you think that people are dishonest about this to a certain extent?
I have heard friends of mine tout truisms like "You have no idea what it's like until you have your own child." Or "I know, I didn't like other's people children, either. Then I had my own." Or "Oh, you get to apprehend anew the world through their eyes and it's this great rejuvenation of your whole sense of being alive."
I have heard them throw this stuff out so often that it sometimes rings a little hollow. I'm not saying that they are lying outright, but there's a feeling with some parents that they're talking themselves into it. Because there's always running parallel this little teasing image of your life without kids. And people feel guilty for thinking of it.
